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Task force ready to check Russia’s nuclear reactors

By ROGER MILNE

Safety experts will meet in Vienna next week to discuss what to do with
Russia’s RBMK nuclear reactors. The gathering at the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) comes exactly two weeks after one of the RBMK reactors
at Sosnovy Bor, near St Petersburg, released a small cloud of radioactive
gas, prompting fears of another Chernobyl disaster.

Since Chernobyl, all 16 RBMKs in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania have
been modified to make them more stable. A flaw in the design meant that
there was a risk of uncontrollable power surges. To combat this, the Russians
now use more enriched fuel and have fitted more control rods. They have
also replaced pressure tubes that have become brittle over the years. Improvements
in instrumentation and emergency shutdown procedures are planned.

An international task force is ready to carry out a safety audit of
all the RBMKs. The team was assembled more than six months ago but has
been held up by delays in funding. The European Commission agreed last year
to set up a fund of 50 million Ecus ( £35 million) to improve the
safety of nuclear reactors all over Central and Eastern Europe. But, so
far, none of the money has been allocated. The IAEA task force needs around
8 million Ecus.

Mike Hayns, from AEA Technology, is heading the British team in the
task force. He told journalists in London last week that the team hoped
to obtain the all clear from Brussels ‘within months’. Hayns argues that
a more comprehensive programme of help is needed. ‘If we want to be helpful
we need to up the work rate,’ he said.

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Derek Pooley of AEA Technology said: ‘We know the RBMK wouldn’t be acceptable
in the West . . . we want to make the RBMKs as safe as it is possible
to make them.’ Last week’s incident prompted renewed calls from Sweden and
Germany for the immediate closure of all RBMKs. But the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) is resisting pressure to close the reactors because
they are essential to the electricity supply.

Until now the international efforts to improve nuclear safety in the
former Soviet bloc have concentrated on the pressurised water reactors called
VVERs, which were built across Eastern Europe. They are considered a greater
risk because the Soviet Union withdrew its technical support when the countries
cut their links with Moscow.

Because RBMKs were designed to produce weapons grade plutonium as well
as generate electricity, they were never built outside the Soviet Union.
The IAEA has carried out a series of reviews of VVERs, but it has not done
the same for RBMKs.

Earlier this year the IAEA had to trim its spending and work on the
RBMKs was cut. Hans Meyer defended the agency’s inaction, saying that until
recently it was impossible to find out who they could deal with in the CIS.